Hi All, first I want to say, I have never had to write up any complaint on anyone, I can remember, but, I felt I must let you all no about the deal that John Clark ,From Canada, made with me, His call sign is VE1JBC, Now on April 13, he e mailed me about a radio he wanted to sell me, We exchanged e mails, and I had him call me just to be sure, talking to him, I thought well its ok, but, just for safey, Ill pay you by pp, so I called paypal, and had them check to see if every thing was ok, he used the paypal, user name of Maria Belicakova, but, they assured me it was fine, well I then sent the $600.00 to him, He said he would try to ship it on Wed, the next day, well, he did not, and did not hear from him, so thursday I heard nothing from him, came friday, now im concerned, I e mailed him again, at his regular e mail, he said he was going to ship it out that nite, and he would contact me, well nothing, so on Saturday, I e mailed him again, and Stated if not shipped out by saturday nite, I would appreciate my money back, I heard nothing back from him, so on sunday, I called paypal, and explained to them he will not send the radio, and filed a case against him, a day or so went buy, and I tried his e mail address, and said I cant beleive you would do this to me, is there a problem, he replyed and said , I need $300.00 ASAP please send it by western union, so he can ship the radio, now shipping was included in the price, so, I new then I was scammed by someone? Got funds bk today,from pp, Bill nbohioham@yahoo.com

As to the Warning I just posted, I run out of space to finish my statement, anyway, if you are or plan on doing business, with him, or whomever ? your best using Paypal, if not for that, I would have lost the entire amount, To be honest, as nice as he was, I would have trusted him, he came accross that well, now im not saying someone did not steal his password or user id, but when the western union statement came up hum, that was now, in my mind as something does not feel right here, But, I was lucky and it all turned out ok for me, they paid my money back, so just be careful, thanks, and god bless, to all, Bill.

That could be, mine was to a few weeks ago, but how would he get his pay pal user Id and password , now that would be hard to get,!also when pp tried to contact him or I believe they freeze ur checking account for the amount , so in 11 days he never noticed $600.00 was froze ? I no I would , any way again glad I used PayPal I would have lost my money. I don't no if he was behind it or not, I would hope not , but that is not for me to say , just giving the facts , god bless Bill

Hi Bill..I am glad you got your money back. I only use Paypal when buying and selling unless I have had past transactions with the other ham. You did say the paypal name was a different name than the sellers. That right there is a dead giveaway for a scam.

That could be, mine was to a few weeks ago, but how would he get his pay pal user Id and password , now that would be hard to get,!also when pp tried to contact him or I believe they freeze ur checking account for the amount , so in 11 days he never noticed $600.00 was froze ? I no I would , any way again glad I used PayPal I would have lost my money. I don't no if he was behind it or not, I would hope not , but that is not for me to say , just giving the facts , god bless Bill

PayPal ID's are easy - it most often is a user's email address. As for passwords, many people use the same passwords for everything because we find remembering multiple passwords too difficult. Personally, I uses separate passwords for anything connected to banking, and couple of others for everything else.

Hi Bill can you clarify...You had said that the user name on paypal was different than that of the sellers. Was that not a red flag of a possible scam attempt? Also you said that you exchanged email addresses. Was the email address the same one being used by the real ham op? How did paypal verify that the email address was in fact the real email address of the seller?

Yes, I called pp on the phone before paying him, or whomever? they assured me it was a good account, also, I did e mail him, at his regular e-mail address, and that is when I received a responce to send him $300.00 by western union, and supposobly he did call me on the phone when I asked him to, the number was a blocked call, but, I thought maybe from canada it might be, I did my best to feel at ease about sending the funds, by calling pp, and also using his email, and asking him to call me, what more can you do? but, that was I guess not enough, In the end, it turned out good for me, so, I dont hold any hard feelings, I only posted this in case there is a scammer out their, maybe using his emails and accounts, and to let fellow hams no, to be very careful, thanks, and god bless, Bill

See the QRZ.com site look for "Swapmeet" in the banner, click it on and you will see "Stolen Radios, Scams & Rip Offs" in the drop down menu. Click that on and refer to "QRZ needs your help Lets Catch This Guy" authored by AA7BQ and you will see how this type of fraud is initiated using hi-jacked call signs. To WC8I, a call to your local telephone directory assistance operator would have provided you with the telephone number of VE1JBC and your concerns could have been addressed with the real VE1JBC prior to your post.

Too bad that despite your hundreds of posts and all the stuff you sold on QRZ over many years you didn’t read the advice and other information about scammers available there (including VE1JBC’s 2013 post about his call sign being used by a scammer that KA2CDT found). Also, although you say you’ve “never had to write up any complaint on anyone, I can remember”, you apparently did do so on several occasions in the QRZ Ham to Ham References forum, so it looks like you have had some bad previous experiences. In any case, there is a lot of good advice to protect yourself against scammers available on QRZ and eHam, including such basics as not to send $$ to third parties, that you should familiarize yourself with.

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